Op-Ed: Nashville media, mayoral candidates are doing democracy wrong

[This Open the Debates op-ed was published July 11, 2019, in The Tennessean.]

More than 2,000 people from all 50 states converged in March at the Unrig Summit, committed to working together to unrig the corrupt political system.

Mayor David Briley graciously welcomed the crowd to Nashville. Jason Eskridge belted out a stunningly powerful rendition of Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come,” and it felt like a sure thing. But several months later, Nashville’s own race for mayor is proving to be a vivid example of unfair and anti-democratic politics as usual. 

Despite 10 candidates putting themselves out there to offer Nashville voters an array of choices, the Nashville media, along with their establishment partners, have predetermined for voters that only four candidates are worthy of consideration.

Six candidates — Jody Ball, Julia Clark-Johnson, Bernie Cox, Jimmy Lawrence, Jon Sewell, and Nolan Starnes — have been all but disappeared. Wiped off the map before voters have even tuned in to the contest. 

Tennessee already has trouble with voter turnout

It is no wonder that Tennessee ranks 44th in the U.S. in voter turnout, according to Nonprofit Vote’s report “America Goes to the Polls.” At the same time The Tennessean put out some initial information on all 10 candidates on June 20, the paper announced that its televised candidate debate on June 25 with NewsChannel 5 and Belmont University would be limited to just 40% of voters’ actual choices on the ballot.

Likewise, The Tennessean’s live video interviews with just four mayoral candidates give voters another glimpse of the four “leading candidates.” This editorial snapshot is not only unfair to the six other candidates who are sacrificing their time and energy to give voters more options, it sends precisely the wrong message to would-be candidates, and it is an insult to voters.

We the People are supposed to be the deciders in our constitutional republic, and we never selected these unaccountable gatekeepers to narrow our choices. Ballot access criteria, while often exclusionary, are at least democratically accountable to the public. 

The debate hosts, including The Tennessean, haven’t publicly announced the basis for their exclusion. NewsChannel 5 described their criteria for including candidates in their basic “Meet the Candidates” coverage — a fundraising haul of at least $100,000.

This is pay-to-play politics in its simplest form. The candidates with the biggest campaign “war chests” rack up free media and drop ad money into the pockets of the media companies framing the 10-way contest as a four-way race.  

In a private email, David Plazas, The Tennessean’s director of opinion and engagement, described the choice as one of “depth over breadth.” He explained, “The decision to limit the debate forum to four candidates centered around past electoral success, money raised (which is directly correlated to public support) and examining policy positions.

“In addition, our past experience of encountering candidates who were running just for laughs and attention also informed this decision. One candidate sued us in court to get on the stage for the debate, but we prevailed.”

A different path

In contrast to Nashville’s undemocratic framing of its mayoral election, when half of Salt Lake City’s mayoral field was about to be excluded from their first debate, several candidates — including the highest polling candidate — teamed up to write a letter calling for more inclusive debates. The debate hosts ended up inviting all eight candidates. 

The wisdom of political gatekeepers leaves much to be desired. Chicago voters bucked the media attempts to frame this year’s 14-candidate mayoral election as a five-way race.

Lori Lightfoot was not invited to the main televised debate, but she ended up with the most votes on election day and won the runoff election five weeks later. Media should provide voters unvarnished information about their choices, not force feed their preferences down our throats. The wisdom of democracy is to let voters decide. 

It’s too bad Briley and the other top contenders haven’t found the same democratic impulse that drove Salt Lake City’s candidates to stand up for open debates. It’s been a long time coming, but a change is gonna come.

Eli Beckerman is the founder of Open the Debates, a cross-partisan force working to open up the political debates of our nation. Learn more at openthedebates.org.